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Sunday’s Breakfast Menu

April 7, 2007 6:15 pmApril 7, 2007 6:15 pm

The timing of Mike Huckabee’s full-show interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” is, let’s put it this way, a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it’s Easter Sunday, so many of the evangelical voters that the former Arkansas governor and Baptist pastor is courting in his bid for the G.O.P. presidential nod might be focusing more on tomorrow morning’s Easter egg hunt than on national politics. On the other hand, presumably because it’s Easter, NBC’s “Meet the Press,” which competes with “Face the Nation” in many markets, has only a pundit panel scheduled. So maybe viewers will flip channels in search of harder news.

That said, there is good reason to watch “Meet” tomorrow. Chuck Todd will be making his first appearance on the show as NBC’s new political director. Insiders have relied on him for years and years as the editor of “The Hotline,” the tip sheet that lets political reporters pretend we’ve read and heard everything out there each day.

For more presidential politics, CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer” has Tommy Thompson, the former Wisconsin governor who officially jumped in early this week, and “Fox News Sunday” has Newt Gingrich, who may never decide to run for president but sure seems to be having a good time campaigning.
In the wake of Friday afternoon’s news that Monica Goodling, a top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who has refused to testify before Congress, is resigning, Senators Arlen Specter and Joseph I. Lieberman will talk about the firings of United States attorneys (and Iraq) on CNN. Senator Chuck Schumer will certainly have a lot to say about the controversy on Fox.

Also on CNN, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is slated to give her take on the British soldiers just released by Iran, and in the spirit of Easter, Mr. Blitzer will talk to Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington.

ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” features Senators Carl Levin and Jon Kyl on Iraq. Senator John Kerry and his wife Theresa Heinz Kerry will plug their new book on the environment.

Charles B. Tiffany’s comments (Post #2) about ‘Meet The Press’ brings to mind the thought that Tim Russert is perhaps the most vacuous ’empty suit’ on network television.

That is he considered to be a ‘star’ simply points up the travesty that American television news and commentary have become.

Is there no American equivalent of the BBC’s John Humphrys?

Are people like Russert even aware of the incisive, intelligent interviewing talents of a Humphrys — or are they too busy being third-rate, instantly-replaceable “celebrities” on the New York/Washington television media roundabout?

Listening to Humphrys interviewing a Tony Blair or other leading politician on the BBC World News (broadcast on weekday mornings by my local NPR station) is an object lesson in how it should be done.

Dear RAS, #1,
Here’s the easy answer: Lieberman is a Republican. About time we acknowledged it, I think.

Dear Mr. Tiffany, #2,
Funny stuff, saw M the P myself and wasn’t impressed, but remember as it’s Easter this was an off day for them, like when you get a substitute teacher for physics. I did really like the one last week (I think) when Schumer and Specter agreed completely about the Gonzales issue. Also, as to American Idolators, what with the massive jerk Cowell whining about leaving, we may mercifully see its demise soon enough.

Here’s what the British were reading over breakfast this Sunday morning:~

INSURGENTS TRANSFORM U.S. MILITARY JAILS INTO ‘TERROR TRAINING CAMPS’

America’s high-security prisons in Iraq have become “terrorist academies” for the most dangerous militant groups, according to former inmates and Iraqi government officials.

Inmates are left largely to run their blocks, which are segregated on sectarian lines. The policy has created a closed world run by Iraq’s worst terrorists and militias, into which detainees with no links to insurgent groups are often thrown.

Inmates from Camp Cropper, the US prison at Baghdad airport, described to The Times seeing al-Qaeda terrorists club to death a man suspected of being an informer. Others dished out retribution with razor wire stolen from the fences.

Captain Phillip Valenti, a US officer responsible for prisons, said he knew of at least three cases of prisoners being murdered by inmates. “We are very concerned about insurgent efforts to recruit and convert detainees,” he said.

US officials said yesterday that they were investigating the suspicious death of another Camp Cropper inmate.

Saad Sultan, the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry’s official for prisons, said: “It looks like a terrorist academy. There’s a huge number of these ‘students'; they study how they can kill. And we protect them, feed them, give them medical care. The Americans have no solution to this problem.”

The UK’s Sunday Times is owned by Rupert Murdoch. Strange how there was no mention of this story on Murdoch’s Fox News this morning. It would have been quite a scoop. Did Roger Ailes not get clearance from the White House?

I trust Lieberman as much as I trust the current adminstration to see the needs of the American people. Mr. Liberman, who now uses nis new popularity to improve his own personal standard, is just as bad as the GOP he now embraces while flaunting his Independant stance.
When he talks nows, I see the spectre of the Bush adminstration, and the constant drivel his expounds for the emperor makes me question just how money IS going into HIS pocket.
And I still wonder why the people of CONN, relected him.
His fervent support of this adminstartion failed policies makes me wonder just how in tune the stae of Conn. really is.

A day late but definitely not a dollar short is Paul Krugman’s column in the New York Times today.

Here is an extract:

“Fox News, which is a partisan operation in all but name, plays a crucial role in the Little Lie strategy — which is why there is growing pressure on Democratic politicians not to do anything, like participating in Fox-hosted debates, that helps Fox impersonate a legitimate news organization.”

RAS, to add to your post #7, here is another extract from Krugman (I second the “worth the price of Times Select comment):

“Before 9/11, however, the right-wing noise machine mainly relied on little lies. And now it has returned to its roots.

The Clinton years were a parade of fake scandals: Whitewater, Troopergate, Travelgate, Filegate, Christmas-card-gate. At the end, there were false claims that Clinton staff members trashed the White House on their way out.

Each pseudoscandal got headlines, air time and finger-wagging from the talking heads. The eventual discovery in each case that there was no there there, if reported at all, received far less attention. The effect was to make an administration that was, in fact, pretty honest and well run — especially compared with its successor — seem mired in scandal.”

Sen Lieberman was Al Gore’s choice to be vice president in 2000 for one reason only. He would have been a draw for the Jewish vote in Florida. He had no other qualifications to be on the democratic ticket; at least what I can see.